Oddly enough, the NAACP doesn’t mention the blacks killed in Hamburg were Republicans.
Bringing the racism of the Democratic party to the forefront.
Via WISTV
As South Carolina pulled down the Confederate flag from Statehouse grounds, the statue of avowed segregationist and former governor and U.S senator “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman watched.
Tillman’s statue seems safe for now – Republican legislative leaders, Democrats in the General Assembly and civil rights leaders aren’t calling for it to come down. But there are calls to at least make sure the memorial to Tillman tells more than the story than what is currently on there, which reads in part: “Loving them he was the friend and leader of the common people.”
“If they just put the truth on it,” South Carolina NAACP President Lonnie Randolph said in a January speech about 20 yards from the statue. “Tell them he is a killer of people. Tell them he was part of a lynch mob. Tell them he was part of burning and shooting people even after he was dead.”[…]
In 1876, Tillman joined with a conservative group of Democrats who wanted to end Reconstruction in South Carolina by winning at the ballot box. Tillman whipped up a mob that killed black Republicans and ended up serving as a voter intimidation effort in what became known as Hamburg Massacre. He moved on to become governor and a U.S. Senator and never regretted the deaths.
“The purpose of our visit was to strike terror,” Tillman said in the Senate in 1900 about the Hamburg Massacre. “And the next morning when the Negroes who had fled to the swamp returned to the town the ghastly sight which met their gaze of seven dead Negroes lying stark and stiff certainly had its effect.”